OH YEAH III - THE THIRD ENCOUNTER (AND OF A CLOSE KIND) by Stefan Posthuma and Richard Karsmakers

"Oh, come on, relax." Cronos Warchild wanted to retort, "That's easy for you to say,chum, you haven't got a suction device hanging in your mouth anda piece of drilling equipment homing in on your molars," insteadof which, however, he heard himself uttering something like,"Hmmmm hmmpff dribble ow sshidd." Why was it a universal property of dentists to try and start aconversation with someone of whom the vital bits of his speechproduction apparatus were temporarily invalidized? He hated his annual checkup, which is why this was his firstone. He already regretted not having regularly undergone them,for now his dentist had started to actually physically drool whenWarchild had opened his mouth to display the oral disarray thathad prompted the visit in the first place. He could have swornthere were Thanatopian Credit signs in the man's eyes before theywere quickly blinked away. The man had looked familiar in a waymany dentists tend to. Cronos was quite sure he had met the manbefore - he just couldn't remember, no matter how hard he tried. "Ssssjjjggrrrrrr," the suction device intoned. Warchild decided he didn't like the drill, and the sedativestings even less. "Now this may hurt a little," a positively gorgeous assistanthad shushed when the revealing of small syringes had causedfrenzied fear to creep on Cronos' face. It is said that the pain limit can be relocated to a rather morefavourable position in the presence of female beauty. This is alie. On top of the discomfort of two pairs of hands working theirways in his orifice he merely felt an additional feeling notunlike cramp elsewhere. Now what had the dentist whispered to that absurdly pretty girljust before that? Warchild had not forgotten his hearing aid thistime, as a matter of fact he had even had new batteriesinstalled. Dura-something - he had liked the rabbit commercial.Now what was it again? "Better give him something extra. He's a big dude. A regulardose might not work, and there's plenty of work to be done."The Thanatopian Credits had been in the man's eyes again, justfor a while. Cronos felt them turning him around. And around again. Theyswivelled the dentist chair a bit. A drill homed in on his eye.He wanted to cry but found it impossible because of an excessamount of tools lodged somewhere. A mirror, previously located ona wall at a sufficient distance, suddenly started to move aroundthe room. At just a few instants after the mirror had startedmoving, Warchild's personal tiny universe folded on itself,collapsing into a tiny speck of blackness at the end of whichthere wasn't a spotlight.

"Oh, come on, relax." He had little other choice. Four boys had tied him to a pillarand the only thing his current position allowed was plenty ofrelaxing, be it in a vertical position. He tried to move a footbut gave up when it turned out to be of no avail. He blinked aneye. Even that was hard, what with all the make-up that wasclumsily painted on it. Now all he had to do was wait. Wait until the boys had decidedto leave him be, and then wait until school opened again afterthe holidays and some stunned janitor would find him. "I know something funny," one of the boys had whispered to him.He had come to life there and then. None of the really popularguys in his class had ever found him worthy of confidentialinformation. Nobody had whispered anything in his ear. He wishedit had been a girl, but for now a boy would have to do. Male tomale bonding it was called, he thought. Anyway, it was betterthan nothing. He had waited breathlessly until the confidential revelationwould follow. It had caught him totally unawares when it had turned out to be,"Me and Tony and Jack here are going to tie you to that pillaroverthere and then paint you with girl's make-up." He had been lucky. They hadn't used reinforced tungsten scarfsto tie him. With any luck, halfway through the holidays he wouldhave wrenched himself loose and then try to stumble home. He wondered if there were any school buses driving in the middleof summer. No, probably not. He'd have to walk the way home. Buthe'd been worse off before. He didn't know exactly when that hadbeen - his memory refused quite desperately to let the eventescape from its psychological hiding place - but he was fairlysure it was true. Anyway, what was 80 miles to a healthy younglad?A stinging pain invaded his consciousness. He thought he heardsomeone shouting angrily, "I told you he needed more. Give himanother shot!" There was a pause. "What do you mean, 'where'?Anywhere will do. As long as it's lots." He saw a familiar face. It made him feel more comfortable, butas if the emotion had to be punished the face changed into thatof Jack, then Tony, then that of Merle with its familiar alreadyretreating hairline. He tried to blink them away but theywouldn't. He tried to reach out but his hands went through theimages, touching nothing. Then, suddenly, there was his father. He was holding a knife andfork and looking rather too hungry. The image was hit on the headby someone else. He wanted to see who this kind benefactor was,but somehow everything stayed hazy."Oops," someone said. A girl's voice expressed wonder somewhereon the other side. "Perhaps you shouldn't exactly have given him*that* much of the stuff." A girl started to sob uncontrollably."And certainly not *there*." The sobbing increased. There was a dramatic pause. If thinking processes could evermake sound, this was deafening. The girl was padded on the back in consolation. Then a man said,"Perhaps I have a solution."

"Mother?" In reply he heard not the expected gentle sound of her voice heso much longed to hear, but a cold wheezy windy sortof of breezysound that he considered void of all emotions. When he opened hiseyes he heaved a deep sigh upon discovering himself in asituation encountered rather too often for any one lifetime:Stranded on an unknown planet without any clothes on. This time,as opposed to all previous times, there was a faint sense ofrelief; he felt confident his American Express Travellers Chequeswere still in the pocket where they belonged. Only the pocket was probably somewhere altogether far away. He could even muster the enthusiasm to utter a heartfelt moan,or even a curse. Life had its strange little twists and turns,but why was he always the one to get the wrong end of its twistedstick? He was getting sick of it. He erected himself. A good thing was that there wasn't anybodyaround to arrest him for indecent exposure, but the bad thing wasthis also meant he couldn't rob anyone off their clothes. Hisbody was trained to block out cold, but the rather minute size ofa certain bit of his anatomy betrayed it more than adequately. Itdestroyed his sense of dignity and on top of that quite literallynullified his manly pride. His head didn't feel like the proverbial half-peeled orange withsquash balls bouncing to and fro in it - all things consideringhe felt pretty excellent, actually. It seemed to prove thatlast night had not involved a battering or alcohol consumption.Only the matter involving bodily coverage would have to beresolved soon. Hiding from sight his private parts rendered onehand useless, something that could prove quite a disadvantageshould this turn out to be yet another dog-eat-dog world. He observed his surroundings. Things were looking up. HisTravellers Cheques were most likely still in his pocket, hedidn't have a brainsplitting headache and he hadn't been dumpedin some desolate, filthy, scum-ridden back alley. He foundhimself looking at two eyes frozen wide open, partly hidden bythe snow that had fallen on what seemed a mound of rubbish quiteliterally in the middle of nowhere. A metallic sound became apparent to the inner workings of hishearing aid, a little world on its own filled with electronicparts and sticky bits of cerumen. Cronos had often wondered aboutit but never quite understood its workings at all. Anyway, thatwas not important. What was important, at least at this time, was that the devicerevealed to the mercenary annex hired gun a kind of slow repeatedlaughter that seemed to emanate from somewhere in the suspicious-looking mound. With his free hand he wiped some snow off the top of the moundand was momentarily startled by the sight of some rather moreunsightly parts of the frozen corpse, its toothless mouth twistedin a dying scream of agony. In its hand the corpse was clutchinga small device which Cronos momentarily mistook for a GargantuanOrgan Disruptor pointed at what he desparately tried to hide withhis other hand. After fighting down the waves of nausea that ranfrom his groin via his spine to his brain, he pried the deviceloose from the frozen fingers and inspected it in more closedetail. "Ha Ha Ha," the device droned. Cronos squinted his eyes to be able to read the fine print onthe bottom of the device. "Cyrius Cybernetics Laughing Gas Dispenser with Pro-Logic Audio-Feedback Unit," it read. Warchild stifled a giggle and pocketed the thing, after which hecursed and picked it up again. It was then that he noticed thesmall nozzle on the top with a even smaller button next to it.Even he knew that buttons were supposed to be pressed - unlessthey were labeled 'self-destruct' in bright red capitals - so heplanted a meaty thumb on the thing. A faint hissing sound followed by a funny smell tickled Cronos'olfactory senses after which he suddenly realized the absurdityof his situation and decided to have a good laugh at himself. Infact, he knew that this one had to be a real holler, a tear-jerker of monumental proportions. He started laughing.

"It is a Class E ice planet, sir, average temperature -20degrees celcius," the android said, "Lifeform readings negative,and no Federation records present in any of the databases." "Very well, Mr. Data, perform another scan when we pass thesystem," the captain instructed.

Snow twirled around the vague shape that was kneeling on a smallmound, clutching its belly while convulsing heavily with whatseemed to be uncontrollable laughter. Loud wails of it eruptedfrom its mouth, and tears formed glistening trails of frozen icecrystals down the face of Cronos Warchild, naked, freezing cold,alone in the middle of nowhere, and laughing.

"I won't stop," the voice said, reassuring. It was the voice ofone with infinite time, one with no desire other than to continuewhat was being done. Warchild tried hard, but failed vigorously. He was finding itdifficult to breathe, his entire body writhing and aching as yetanother powerful boost of laughter coarsed up and down his body.He was beginning to laugh the laugh of the insane, the pipinghigh semi-roar of girls, whatever, but nothing vaguely male orheroic or mercenary-ish. "I assure you I won't stop," the voice repeated. Its ownerseemed to enjoy doing whatever it was doing, which was moving afeather up and down one of Warchild's bare soles, his victim tieddown entirely and immovably with boyscout knots. There were somebystanders, laughing for entirely different reasons. Cronos' reaction was void of anything but laughter. He wouldhave laughed at the crucifixion of Christ, hollered in the faceof Ashtaroth, smilingly given the finger to Cthulhu and hooted atArmageddon itself. There was no stopping it. They had found hisweak spot. For three years he had succeeded in hiding it mostcleverly from his tutors and fellow students, but somehow theyhad found out about it.The dragon moved closer to him. He tried to evade its mightyclaws and its reeking, fiery breath, but the animal would notrelent. He took a few steps back, suddenly finding himself upagainst a wall. If dragons could grin inanely, this one would have. It waiteduntil it could close in on its victim. There was nowhere for theculprit to go. Supper time! "Feed me!" the dragon said in some inexplicable language of itsown. It had loved that film. Quite suddenly a light struck the intended victim. The dragonwas bound to have a weak spot. All creatures great and small hadweak spots. He had one himself, and if the dragon had it too hewas saved for sure. From his pocket the victim - none other thana Knight of the Round Table - took a quill. He would probably nolonger be able to write with it a letter to his loved one, but atleast he would remain alive to buy another one. Nobody can stand tickling. Not under the soles of their feet. Hedoubted whether Atilla, Hitler, Napoleon or Caligula would havehad such success in their conquests had they not known boots andhad been forced to walk across short grass. Triumphantly he extended the quill. The dragon wondered. Warchild had been most rudely interrupted from his dreams ofvaliance by an odd feeling. A fellow student looked him right inthe face, guffawing. It was Merle. He had hated Merle for a longtime but, in the way this tends to happen to many persons youdon't like - including the person you ritually exchange addresseswith when on holiday - both their careers had quitespontaneously unfolded in a similar way. Fate was like gravity -it sucked. "Now we know your weak spot, Charwild," an almost demonic voicehad said, "Next time try not to talk in your sleep!"

The android gave his scanner displays a typical puzzled look andturned around to face his captain. "Captain, the scanners seem to be picking up signs of a humanoidlifeform on the planet surface." "But I thought you said there weren't any lifeforms on theplanet." "Its lifesigns are weak, sir, they only just showed up on thescans." "Additional information?" "Hard to tell, sir, the intense snow storms and otheratmospheric circumstances make it hard to be more precise. Theconditions do allow for use of the transporter, however." "Make it so."

To relieve the tension, Cronos let go of another shrieking galeof hard core laughter. It was beginning to hurt. He doubted if hewould ever again be able to hiccup without a pungent achestabbing through most of his abdomen. "I am quite happy to continue indefinitely," the voice confidedin him. Warchild didn't doubt it for a second. Assistants at theProximity Sigma Mercenary Academy were famous for few things buttheir relentless stamina was one of them. He made a mental note,between a few violent convulsions, to teach Merle a lesson when -if - he ever got out of this predicament. A part of his brain frantically signalled him to faint. He hatedfainting. Girls faint, men didn't. He was brought up withtraditional values. But, then again, perhaps this time it wasn'tsuch a daft idea anyway. Perhaps the tickling would stop. Oh, mommy, why wouldn't the tickling stop? Almost blotted out completely by Warchild's laughter, a voicesaid, "That will be quite enough." The world came in focus again, and the echoes of his ownlaughter wore off as quickly as the violent feather-induced itchunder his left sole. The assistant jumped to attention. "Sir!" "At ease, sergeant," the man said. It was a decorated soldier,wearing a rather fancy uniform that betrayed a high rank.Warchild had never been good at learning ranks, but he reckonedthis guy was pretty high up the fascist ladder. He connected theface with a name...salmon...haddock...carp...Trautman, that's it,Colonel Trautman, a man almost his father, the main Academy'ssupervisor and director of daily affairs, probably the onlyindividual convinced that, deep down, cadet Warchild had thingsgoing for him.

Cronos looked up through a haze of tears when some peoplematerialized beside him and the snow-covered mound. There was aweird sound. He couldn't make out any details, nor even theactual amount of individuals that suddenly considered itnecessary to be present. "It's life, sir, but not as we know it," the android said. Helooked at Warchild quizzically. His yellow eyes scanned themercenary. Had he been capable of human emotions, he would haveexperienced something not unlike pity. "You wouldn't believe the things I see," another man emphasized,a black guy with a permanent infrared vision device attached tohis head, "just a large blue shape with a tiny red sort of wormin the procreational area." A woman giggled girlishly and took out her tricorder. It uttereda few beeping sounds and then became utterly quiet. Apart fromtelling her that there were the faintest traces of an alien gaspresent, its display read, "DEAD." "To our standards he isn't even alive, Geordi," she concluded. "But he's moving," Geordi said. "Death and mobility aren't necessarily mutually exclusive," theandroid remarked, "for example, it is a well known fact the MuierShipbiter, the large flightless tracking bird of AltitudePleiadis, travels back to its place of birth by means ofinvoluntary post-mortem muscle convulsions induced by electricalpatterns emanating from the brain decomposition process." The android uttered a meaningful pause for dramatic impact,totally failing to sense the fact that all people present thoughthe was a smart-arse, then added, "The largest recorded distancecovered by this wholly unique means of vertebrate propulsion is67.62 earth miles." "What do you think of this, Commander Riker?" the womaninquired, indicating Warchild. Cronos deemed that instant perfect to demonstrate once more theextent of movement his apparently dead body was capable of.Another fit of laughter shuddered his being. "Well, Dr Crusher," the Commander replied, a man who had so farobserved in silence, "perhaps it's some kind of hibernatingspecies." "Hibernating and laughing at the same time?" a Klingon intoned.He wasn't amused and was nervously fingering his phaser. InKlingon society you didn't laugh in the presence of others. As amatter of fact he found this humanoid blatantly insulting, deador not. Back home he would not have constrained himself. "Riker to Enterprise," the Commander said after hitting himselfon the chest. "Go ahead, Number One," a voice came from nowhere. It was thekind of voice you would attach a bald head to. "We found a life form here that may be in need of medical aid,"Dr Crusher said, ignoring the Klingon's snort. There was a pause. "OK," the voice out of nowhere spoke. "Six to beam up," the Commander said. There was a strange light effect, as if in some cheap SciFiseries, and an equally strange sound. Once that had ceased, theonly sound was that of the wind, breezy kindof windy. In the middle of nowhere there was a mound next to which lay apartly snowed in Cyrius Cybernetics Laughing Gas Dispenser withPro-Logic Audio-Feedback Unit, but it was beyond the corpse to beable to laugh about it.

The Klingon escorted Cronos to the bridge. By now the mercenaryannex hired gun had totally recovered from his icy ordeal. He wascomfortably warm again, neatly dressed in crisp clothes andfeeling decidedly less giggly than before. He was a bitdisoriented though - the last thing he clearly remembered waslying in a dentist's chair and being severy sedated. Now he waswalking beside a taciturn Klingon on what seemed to be aFederation starship. They reached the bridge. A door opened automatically, they wentthrough, and the door closed behind them. It was the kind of doorCronos expected to drone, "Thank you for making a simple doorhappy," but it didn't. They went inside, where he was lead to a balding middle agedman, and a very familiar-looking balding middle aged man at that.Several bells rung as the recollections took a solid shape insidethe vast emptiness that formed Cronos' mind. "Merle!" he yelled. "Er...How do you know my real name?" the captain hushed toCronos, an embarrassed and perplexed look on his face. The android swiveled in this chair. "I checked this individual'sgenetic patterns to the old Federation Colonies DNA databases andfound a 99.8% match on Ambulor Eight where he has spent aprolonged amount of time in the hospital for the Very VerySplattered. Despite appearances he's human, one Cronos JehannumWarchild." "Captain, I sense utmost confusion and a violent sense ofrevenge in this man," a dark-haired woman with huge black eyescounselled agitatedly. The Klingon immediately drew a phaser and started forward, anunprofessionally eager look on his face. Cronos launched himself at his nemesis, intending to reduce himto a mass of quivering flesh. He was stopped rather painfully bya phaser blast from a grinning Klingon. It slammed him up againsta panel. A few lights blinked, a few beeps beeped. "Incidentally," Mr Data added, unperturbed, "according tothese records this hospital is supposed to be run by a nurse wholooks like an identical of Gloria Estefan." Unfortunately for the couple of thousand people aboard thestarship, the phaser shot had hurled Cronos Warchild against alarge red button with the text "PLEASE BE SO KIND SO AS NOT TOPRESS THIS BUTTON, FOR IT WILL SELF-DESTRUCT THE SHIP". Perhaps Cronos Warchild had finally taught Merle his lesson.Unfortunately, however, there were hundreds of people attendingthe same class, one of them being Cronos himself who was toounconscious to alter anything. A siren threw in a few wailing words.

"THIS WAS NOT IN THE SCRIPT," a voice boomed. A hushed silence fell over the bridge. Cronos scratched his head as he sat up and looked aroundhimself. "I WILL NOT ALLOW IT," the voice continued. A huge face appearedon the viewscreen. "Mr. Roddenbery!" the crew exclaimed in exalted chorus. A gaffer walked up to the large red button, irritated, andpushed it once more. The siren ceased its incessant wailing. "SCOTTY, BEAM THIS MAN OUT OF HERE," the mysterious voice nowcommanded. "Excuse me, Mr. Roddenbery," the android began, "but there is norecord of a Scotty, Mr Scott or anybody with the first name Scottaboard the Enterprise..." "Shut up, Data," the captain snapped. "Mr O'Brien, beam this...this...Neanderthal out of here," headded. "Aye, sir," the transporter chief responded, "whichcoordinates?" "Anywhere will do," the captain said, suppressing an evil grin,"basically any random planet. As long as it's far away fromhere." "Aye, sir," O'Brien said. Finally a command that left room forsome creativity.

Cronos found himself standing on a grassy plain, a shimmeringsun hanging in the sky. It was silent, eerily silent almost, andas usual he was completely baffled, utterly confused and mostmuddled for a very long time. Thoughts of Merle drifted throughhis mind but he didn't know exactly why or how. Before he had a chance to completely recover, though, anotherbizarre thing started happening. Small mounds of earth began toappear all around him, muddy hands extending from some of them.Soon, earth-smeared heads started popping up everywhere. Sometime later Cronos found himself surrounded by a large group ofextremely soiled men and women dressed. They were all quitenaked, although most details of their features were in some waycovered by mud and bits of fungi. They had all crawled from theirown individual little holes in the earth and were now eying eachother vibrantly, the tension in the air building up around a nowtotally dumbfounded Cronos who had absolutely no idea what wasgoing on. He had never been anywhere where people sortof pop outof the ground where you stand. Warchild stammered something. "Daa...baaaa..." This seemed to trigger the strange group because at that momentthey all started fondling other muddy individuals and engaging inacts of rather explicit sexual nature. These were explicit enoughfor Cronos to turn slightly red around the cheeks. For the firsttime since his waking up on the ice planet did he realize that hein fact did himself have a sexual organ located in the lowerabdominal area. He wandered around aimlessly for a while, making sure not tostep on any of the writhing bodies around him, trying to makesense of it all. After a while he found a solitary woman lying onthe ground, naked and covered in streaks of dirt, her formsexposed to a befuddled Cronos who never really knew what to do inthis kind of situation. He sat down next to her and decided tofind out what was going on. "From what hole are you, handsome?", the woman asked huskily. "Errr...well...", Cronos didn't really know what to say. Henever before had his home planet Sucatraps referred to as a hole. For a brief instant visions flickered across the insides of hiseyes. There was the utterly enticing Klarine Appledoor. After twomoments she was squashed by the rather less slim form of PenelopeSunflower, his almost-betrothed. And, of course, there was half ananosecond worth of Loucynda, enough to see the sturdy and ratherrusty locks around the chastity belt were resisting time bravely.He always had that when he was around women. He either startedacting like a total git or simply shut up and enteredrecollection mode. His lack of words, however, merely seemed to flatter the woman,encourage her. Maybe she was an expert at body language, or maybethe rapidly shifting folds in the crotch area of Cronos' trouserstold her all she needed to known. She peeled a piece of dry mudoff a breast. Cronos had no idea the removal of sand crust couldbe this provoking. A few of his inner glands started to excretetheir produce. "What is all this?" Warchild asked. "Isn't it obvious?" the woman responded rhetorically. "No." "This is the moment we've all waited for," the woman said. Hereyes went into a musing distant-gaze mode when she told a storyinvolving the burial of 41 infants in the rich and nurturingsoils of the Mother Planet where their collective minds woulddream about Unabridled Sexual Nirvana for 17 years until finallythe Exhumation Phase of their Life Cycle would come upon them.She revealed to him the Doctrine of the Nine Utterly Holy Phases- Cloacal Birth, the Burying of Infant Eggs, Life in Entombmentfor Seventeen Years, the Unearthing, the Shedding of the Sands,the Mating (a.k.a. Passionate Time of Ultimate Bliss), theSmoking of the Cigarette and then, after a short but excitingLife, the Revelation of the Truth in Death. A pretty fulfillinglife, so she assured him. To Cronos she appeared to be human, but she was talking abouteggs and cloacas - and what was this thing with the cigarette? Hewas about to ask when she grabbed him in her arms. The two ofthem looking like the covers of cheap love novels, only this timethe male held by the female. "O noble hunk," she whispered wetly in his ear, "be my SacredPartner in the Ritual of Ultimate Joining!" He thought about it for a while, but not for long. The womanpeeled another piece of half-dried mud off her anatomy. This timeit revealed part of her right buttock. Warchild hadn't realisedhalf a square inch of buttock could look in any way luring. Well,he concluded, this particular piece did. The woman, her lips moist with desire and her eyes undressinghim unceremoniously, now interpreted Cronos' muteness asreluctance. She had to fight for him. Perhaps he was playing hardto get. She liked that in a man. It's never any fun if they throwthemselves at you. She liked getting "no" for an answer. Theyalways meant "yes" anyway. "I have four sexual organs, you know," she revealed, "and that'snot even including the cloaca." She turned around a bit andshowed a few of them. By now Warchild got the general idea. In fact, the part of hisbody that had been shrivelled hopelessly during his ice planetexperience was now claiming most of his blood and sending wavesof unclean thoughts through his mind. Perhaps a blood vessel in his brain sprung, or an adrenalingland went into Warp 9 mode. Things went strange. "Videodrome!", he yelled, tore his T-shirt off his body andjumped onto the ecstatic woman. That is to say he aimed to hurlhis body at her but somehow it failed to hit its target andimpacted a rather unforgiving piece of bedrock. Debbie Harryvanished off his mind and was replaced by a screaming pain racingthrough his nervous system. Yet a certain part of him was poisedfor serious action and the sudden impulse of the cold and grittyrock was enough to cause a rather intense climax of the mostpinnacle kind. A blurred vision of tissues and washing machinescame to his mind, but it was quickly replaced by a detailedvision of microwave ovens and food blenders. It was orgasmic, fatamorganic, spirallomatic and truly mind-evaporatingly huge. The Dingo stared at him with yellow eyes, anda brightly lit church from Vienna appeared before him. Kiss theguitar, feel the Fields of the Nephilim. Someone's got to suffer.Pain looks great on other people, that's what they're for. He wassick of all the people, the angels getting on his nerves. Sweetdreams, his soul screamed. He cannot live, he cannot die,Sumerland is where he wanted to go. It was the depth of his soulmade real. Afraid of waking up, he stayed deep down in the landsof forever...call it a day. What a bastard of a blinking cursorstaring at him. Sleep...forever... Last thing he remembered was a rather cute Tiger Quoll lookingat him, wondering what he was doing. He didn't know where thelittle animal had come from, and actually didn't even realize itwas one. He decided to give in to what his body wanted him to do. With an erection that would have made any London Knight proudand a girl next to him that was ready'n'willing to go to the endand have him mount her in each of her many bodily openings hefainted.

The thing most prominently present in his mind was the face ofMerle. Or Picard, or whatever he called himself now. It morphedto and fro into a hungry face of his father. In the back of hismind he heard his mother pleading with the man, but there was nostopping him. His father was whetting a stainless steel kitchen knife of hugeproportions, eyeing him rather unfatherly. "It has to go!" the man bellowed. Cronos tried to hide behind his mother but his father shoved thefrail woman aside and advanced on him with a grin of verydemoniacal proportions. "Come here boy," his father whispered satanically, "it might noteven hurt." "Drahcir!" his mother uttered, "please be careful!" Cronos had hated the idea of circumcision ever since.

"OoooOoooOiooooOooooOiiiioOOoOOoOoooOO..." Cronos felt a tiny tongue licking his face. "OOOoooOooOoiiiioOOOiiOooooOOOooiiiioOOO..." He opened his eyes and was confronted with the rather cute TigerQuoll that seemed to like him rather a lot. "OOoooOooOOoiiiiooOOooOOOOooooOOooo..." The strange sound seemed to arise from one end of a long pipe.Attached to the other end was a strange looking man with scruffyblack hair, his body covered only with a primitive loincloth andmulti-coloured paint. The pipe seemed to be some kind of bush-native instrument. The word "didgeridoo" sprang to mind. Cronos sat up straight and uttered an inquiring, "Huh?" The Quoll, disappointed, began licking its own genitals instead.The man removed the pipe from his mouth and started to speak witha heavy accent. "Hey man, whatya doing 'ere?" Cronos looked around him and noticed several empty holes. A fewof them had been filled up again and covered. "Dunno, actually. Where is everybody?" he asked. "They buggered off to bury the eggs and then...well...let'sjust say I'm 'ere to clean up the mess," the man said. "Mess?" Warchild wanted to know. The man said nothing, merely pointing in another direction.Cronos' head swivelled - without as much as a heroic "swoosh" -and beheld a pile of dead people he had missed so far. It wouldhave been nice for this story if he had recognized the girl withwhom he had had the near-hit experience, but he didn't. Therewere just lots of legs and arms, some totally worn out bodies andasinine grins on a lot of faces, some still with smoulderingcigarette butts dangling in them. A breeze took the smell ofdeath and Saigon Brothel Backrooms to him. Disgusting! If only because he hadn't been part of the eventsnecessary to produce the distinctive scent.

Reality isn't half as real as you think it is, and just when youthink you've come to grips with it everything changes. In booksall things happen in neat patterns where great minds have thoughtout excellent plots to let their characters experience the mostexciting of exploits. Cronos Warchild, mercenary annex hired gun,was about to have something happen to him that was of norelevance to his current situation whatsoever. Which is half thefun of writing, sometimes, though not necessarily of reading. Somewhere deep within the reaches of space a cell twisted andturned. It was a warped cell, deadly in its own disctinctive andvery weird way. Without apparent reason it decided to pick out arandom life form in the multiverse and hit it on the head.

"They surely went out with a bang, didn't they?" Cronos asked. The man nodded and started playing 'Advance Australia Fair' onhis instrument. "OOOoooOooOoiiiioOOOiiOooooOOOooiiiioOOO..." Cronos was not a very smart man. We know that, because it hasbeen mentioned countless times. Nonetheless he had a strangeinnate sense of tact, which now told him the man had no furtheruse for him. He'd better make himself scarse. Somewhere deep within the reaches of space, though nowinfinitely much closer, there was something that *had* a use forhim. Though it, and he, didn't quite know yet, at least notconsciously. It hurled itself at an ever increasing speed towarda squarely built form, even though neither was yet visible to theother. What to do now? The huge pile of smiling corpses wasn't a likelypartner for jest or conversation, not even a friendly fight.Infinity is all relative, just a matter of perspective. What sounded like the loudest explosion conceivable to the earsof the rotating cell - had it had them - was virtually and quitetotally indistinguishable from utter silence to the MercenaryAnnex Hired Gun. Within the instant of collision, however,profound changes occurred in both of them. The cell suddenly found itself in a void we know as Cronos'brain. It wasn't the best place to be in, but at least it wasconfined whilst still allowing room for plenty of motion. Atleast it was safe, and they wouldn't know where to find it.Hopefully. Cronos suddenly found his cranial contents doubled. Whereaspreviously his brain had been almost solely dedicated tomovement, a few incoherent thoughts and the production ofapparently sentient speech, its newly acquired extra capacity wasentirely paranormal. Cronos had never known paranormality was a bacterial diseaseflung on you by a discontent universe, and he probably neverwould. What matters to the current discourse, however, is thatthis was exactly what had happened. Warchild looked at the man that had almost finished playing theAustralian National Anthem. Instead of a man, however, his mindsaw a boy. A frightened boy that looked around it in panic. It shouted."No, father!" The man looked at Cronos. Had his multi-coloured paint fainted,perhaps, and was the stranger looking intently at that?"No!" "Leave that boy alone!" Cronos bellowed. He meant business. The man looked around him. He saw no boy to leave alone. Thestranger was surely acting irrational. Then the boy was gone, just like that. Warchild walked up to theman and shook him at what, for lack of a better word, were thelapels of his loincloth. "What have you done, insane man?!" he shouted. His eyes lookedaround rapidly, "where is the boy?" "Wuh...wuh...wuh...what boy?" the man stuttered. Warchild suddenly looked at the right ear of the man, or perhapssomewhat beyond. He cocked his head. He could have sworn he heardsome music. It was peaceful music, with flute and softsynthesizer. His mind told him, not with words but equallyeffectively, "Gandalf. Gandalf's 'Fantasia'." "Fuck off, idiot!" the man said, recognizing the wild look inCronos' eyes gone all soft. Warchild sat down. "'He' tells me not to use those words," Cronos said with thepatient and infinitely peaceful voice of a religious nut. "Who?" the man said, irritated, "the boy?" "No...no..." Cronos responded, dreamily, "'he' told me." The man displayed an "Oh no, it's Jehovah's witnesses" look. Hepatted Warchild on the shoulder. "He's a good boy," he said, soothingly, with his other handswinging the Aboriginal instrument. It was made of wood lovinglyfondled and spoken to for countless generations. He hoped itwould survive the intented maltreatment. There was a skull-jarring 'thud'. A cell was hurled off backinto space. "Oh no, now they will be after me again?" Cronos wonderedfleetingly as unconsciousness once more embraced him.

"Genuine fake watches!" The exclamation had a difficult time reaching Warchild'sawareness. "Genuine fake watches!" He opened his eyes. He had expected to be on a totally differentplanet without any clothes on and, indeed, he wasn't. Life isn'tlike that. However, seeing as a city seemed to have been erectedabout him, he reckoned he had been out for a while. He staredalmost directly into the empty eyesockets of a few grinningcorpses, butt-ends stuck between perpetually grinning skeletalteeth blowing softly in the wind. Now he thought he couldrecognize the girl whom his near-hit relationship had been basedon. She had lost quite a bit of weight since he'd last seen her. Why had the builders left the pile of corpses in their city? Hadthey considered it an artefact of sorts? Why had they left him?Was he an artefact too? "Genuine fake watches!" Warchild tried to move but found that he couldn't. Hefrantically scanned his memory for explanations. Was heparalyzed? Cast in concrete? Rendered motionless by some arcanewizard's spell? In reality everything can be much more simple. He was dead. Atleast he showed all the signs of it. "Genuine fake watches!" The voice was a lot louder now. It just repeated relentlessly.Cronos tried to crane his neck but couldn't. Instead he cranedhis eyes as much as he could and saw the type of guy you wouldexpect to pop up at spectacularly gory accidents in the street,selling sausages. "Genuine fake watches!" "Hey," Cronos tried to whisper, but nothing passed his lips. Hetried to shout but that proved of no avail either. Nobody heededhim, and there was no way he could cause people to start. He was beginning to feel just as genuinely uncomfortable as thewatches were fake. "Genuine fake crowns!" The man turned around to look at the mercenary annex hired gun. "Definitely genuinely fake!" he cried, eyeing Cronos rather moreclosely. "I don't understand," a voice said, and there was a female voicethat said something in the background. Cronos blinked his eye afew times. The watch salesman grew blurry.

There was a distinct smell. The kind of smell you always try toprevent your dentist from smelling but that instead the manhimself breathes up your nostrils when examing your orifice inthe most minute detail, every agonizing minute it takes. "He appears to be coming to," the girl now said, "good thing youdid with the water and the feather." "Forget that," a man's voice said, "or we'll get sued untilwe're both cross-eyed. C'mon, give me that sucker." Cronos blinked his eyes again. He was quite sure someone hadjust put a suction device in his mouth. Instinctively he waitedfor the inevitable conversation to develop. His sight was adjusting to the light. The first silhouette itsaw was that of the ravishingly gorgeous dentist's assistance.What a silhouette! It was actually the first time in his life hehad woken up with that kind of view. "Ha," the dentist said, sounding happy, "it seems we are wakingup? Have we had a nice nap?" Cronos wanted to say, "Actually, no, I had a bit of a nightmarewhere I sortof get dumped on planets by the likes of you, where Ihad an almost perfect encounter with someone of a different andhighly compatible gender but somehow everything went wrong. Idon't know how much time I spent in your damn chair with halfyour suckers collection dangled in my mouth, but if you think I'mgoing to pay for this you've got another thing coming. And I hatethe way you're talking to me as if I'm some half-arse imbecile. Iwould, however, like to have a go at dating your positivelylovely assistant, though, if you don't mind." He tried hard, especially with the last bit, but all that cameout, as he looked at the almost totally bald head of the dentistwhose face he now quite suddenly remembered, was, "Hmmmm hmmpffdribble ow sshidd!"

Disclaimer
The text of the articles is identical to the originals like they appeared
in old ST NEWS issues. Please take into consideration that the author(s)
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